


Diabolus in Musica

by ObliObla, redledgers



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Dan Espinoza, Background Mazikeen (Lucifer TV), Developing Relationship, Devil Face (Lucifer TV), F/M, Light Angst, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Devil Reveal, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 14:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20583740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla, https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: When Trixie joins a children's choir directed by the illustrious and wealthy Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe finds herself falling for a man who might just be the Devil himself.





	Diabolus in Musica

The party is _ torture_, even by Chloe’s standards. She can tell that Dan is also uncomfortable, surrounded by the wealth and showmanship of the other parents. But Trixie has worked hard to be here, and Chloe has to admit, the liquor _ is _ good. Her eyes skim across the chatting parents and children, stopping on Trixie for just a brief moment, until they settle on Lucifer. 

The enigmatic and utterly charming choir director seems even more in his element here, entertaining guests, than he ever had on stage, and that’s saying something. She doesn’t bother trying to hide her gaze as she takes another sip of her drink. Dan has Trixie this weekend; she can take an Uber if she needs to. It doesn’t take long until he feels her watching and turns to meet her eyes with a dark look that twists her insides up. 

_ “You play?” she asked, and she wasn’t even sure why she felt embarrassed to catch him picking out a melody on the piano that still sat on the stage. But she’d dropped her keys beneath her seat and realized they were sort of essential to making it home. _

_ He stopped playing and looked at her, head tilted as if he was merely curious about her presence. “Well, of course I do. How else would I teach the children?” _

_ Of course. Chloe turned away and started down the row they’d been sitting in. Her keys lay lonely on the ground and she grabbed them. When she stood, Lucifer was at the end of the row, watching her. “Which one of the urchins is yours?” _

_ She shoved the keys into her pocket. “Trixie.” _

_ He looked thoughtful, tongue licking at his lips before he met her gaze. “Oh, Beatrice. Lovely voice.” He held out his hand. “Lucifer Morningstar.” _

_ She made her way to the end of the row and shook his hand. His name sounded even more ridiculous now than it did earlier when he had introduced himself to the audience. As if she didn’t already know who he was. “Chloe Decker.” There was a glint in his eyes that she wasn’t sure what to make of, so she blundered on. “I liked the song near the end… the one from Song of Songs?” _

_ “Oh, did you like that number?” Lucifer grinned now, salacious and wanting. “You should hear the rest of what's in that book." _

_ "No, no, I'm…" She’d never been religious, but she was familiar enough to understand exactly where he intended on taking that train of thought. "I'm fine." _

_ Lucifer tilted his head and considered her. Like he was just starting to see her in the dim light of the auditorium. "Tell me then, Detective Decker, what is it that you desire?" He leaned closer, his voice almost a purr, the resolution of a melodic line. She saw his eyes go dark, blown out already. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light. _

_ Chloe felt the stale, dry air shift around them, crashing over her with waves of force, but nothing happened. She held up her keys. "I think I'd like to go home," she said, stepping back to remove him from her personal space. "How did you know I was a detective?" _

_ Lucifer straightened, brow furrowed, and his hand shifted as if he were conducting a silent orchestra before he shoved it into his pocket. "Beatrice talks about you," he replied. He sounded perplexed, like he had another question he wanted to ask. _

_ Before he could continue, someone blessedly interrupted. “Time to go, boss,” a woman said, and Chloe vaguely remembered her being introduced at the end of the show. Mazikeen, the accompanist. _

_ Mazikeen eyed her, a little bit of interest and a lot of disapproval glittering in her eyes. Chloe took the opportunity to say a hasty goodbye and leave, feeling her face burn beneath his confusion, their scrutiny. She had to be at the precinct early and she was not one of those mothers in the audience who had sighed the second he stepped on the stage. _

She takes another drink. Trixie’s weight crashing into her legs gives her an opportunity to break the eye contact before her cheeks flush red. “Hi, monkey,” she says, smiling down at her beaming daughter.

Trixie tugs on her shirt, and so Chloe crouches. “Daddy wants to leave soon,” she says, throwing her arms around Chloe’s neck. She’s still radiating joy from the performance, her tiny body overflowing with potential and delight. She’d worked hard for her solo and it showed. Chloe feels her heart swell ten times over.

“You did really well tonight,” Chloe replies, returning the hug almost as viciously, burying her nose in Trixie’s hair. “I’ll see you on Monday, okay?” And then Trixie is gone, bounding toward Dan, who already has their coats in hand. 

With Trixie gone, there’s really no reason for her to stick around, but still she waits as the families file out, wishing their host a wonderful winter break, batting their eyelashes at him as he ushers them into the elevator with little else but a wave.

Even Maze lingers for just a few extra minutes, circling the main space of the penthouse before she makes her way to the elevator. She sweeps her gaze over Chloe with an eyebrow raised, and pats her arm rather forcefully on the way out. _ Huh_. 

When everyone is gone, Lucifer sighs, some of the night’s tension bleeding out of him, as if he spent his last bit of eclectic energy on too many children in his space. Chloe thinks he barely sees her as he passes by and pours himself a drink at the bar, but then he looks at her with a delighted grin. “Stuck around for the after concert?”

A smile twitches at the corner of her lips, and she lets it free. “I wanted to thank you,” she says. “For working with Trixie and encouraging her.”

_ “Stand up straight, Beatrice,” Lucifer instructed, firmly but not unkindly. He hardly seemed to notice Chloe as she sat on the couches a few feet from the piano. “Again.” _

_ Trixie changed her posture and sang the line again. Chloe couldn’t hear much of a difference, but she was out of practice. Lucifer did, though, and he clapped his hands together. “See? Posture is the key.” _

_ Chloe remembered when Trixie climbed into the car after practice one day, announcing that she had been selected for a solo in the winter concert. And now Chloe found herself filling out paperwork and even once or twice trying to read something other than a casefile while her daughter received private instruction. _

_ “At your next appointment, we’ll begin the solo in earnest.” _

_ He was a consummate professional during the lessons, but a few times, when Trixie had already bounded into the elevator, he stopped her with a glance filled with meaning, or a quiet word she’d end up thinking about all day. _

She shakes her head lightly and watches Lucifer’s eyes follow the motion of her hair, which she left down for the concert.

“Yes, well, Beatrice is a great talent,” he says, grinning at her. “Must get it from her mother.” She can feel the heat of his gaze, a counterpoint to his light tone, and watches as he makes his way over to the piano he kept covered and closed for the entire party. Why subject everyone to more spontaneous children’s singing without a good reason?

His fingers are light against the keys, and he rests them there for a beat, a breath, and then he turns to look up at her.

“Would you sing for me?” he asks almost shyly, the expression sitting oddly on his face. He makes no move to get up from the bench, but she shivers when he licks at his lip.

“_Oh_,” she says, because she’s not sure what else to say. “I haven’t sang in... hell, _ years._”

“Oh, yes, I’m well aware,” he says, maintaining the softness but somehow managing to combine it with a leer that shouldn’t be half as affecting as it is. “_Broadway High School _ is one of my favorite films.”

She feels her cheeks burn, from embarrassment this time—that movie isn’t _ quite _ a secret shame, but she does regret the often terrible songs, the truly awful costumes, and her slightly pitchy delivery—but he seems entirely genuine. 

“I-I wouldn’t even know what to sing.” But she does know; she’s been thinking about it since the concert. She bites her lip. “Do you know…_ Eternal Flame_?” She can’t resist a good ‘90s jam, even if it _ is _ technically from the ‘80s.

His smile, when it comes, is slow and uncomplicated. “I know everything.” And in that moment, she believes him. Believes everything he’s ever said about himself. When he plays, her breath catches, though it’s a simple melody, and she steps closer despite herself.

The first few words come out breathy and uncertain, but he only grins more broadly, and she nods to herself. She sings in the shower, after all, and to her daughter; this isn’t so different. And she finds she hasn’t forgotten, not really, when her voice grows stronger, and she continues into the second verse.

He is watching her as she sings, but not with the analytic eye he grants his students. There’s an earnestness there, a dark tint to his gaze, and, suddenly, he stands, the last of the notes vibrating in the air, and sweeps around her, settling behind her. She can feel him breathe, feel the heat of him against her back—though he’s not touching her—and she is nervous for a moment. But he doesn’t grab, doesn’t hold, merely brushes her hair gently over her shoulder.

“If music be the food of love, play on,” he whispers at her ear.

She shudders but does as he says, and he joins her in a harmony so close she instinctively leans against him as they sing the chorus.

He kisses her, then—her hair, the shell of her ear, the back of her neck—and stays there to breathe slowly. She reaches back and finds his hands, pulling them forward, leaving one on her waist, the other on her shoulder. He steps closer, pulls her flush against him, and she hums in her throat as she finishes the song, his fingers searching for the places that make her breathing hitch.

“_Lucifer,_” she murmurs as his hand splays across her chest, the other smoothing against her hip.

“Is this what you desire?” he asks, and it has none of the affectation it held the first time he said those words, the first time they met. His fingers tighten against her breast, and she sighs, pressing back further into him.

“Yes,” she says softly and shifts her hips back against him.

He hisses and surges forward. “Chloe,” he pants, and she likes how her name sounds in that desperate tone. He’s already so wrecked, clinging to her, and the knowledge that she did this to him warms her blood and sends sparks down her spine.

She takes his hands again and brings them to the buttons of her blouse.

He chuckles darkly into her hair as he unfastens her shirt. “Minx,” he mutters fondly.

Her arms get trapped in her sleeves, but they’re both unwilling to pull away long enough to untangle them. She hears his jacket fall to the ground behind her before every other sensation is lost to his hands painting heat across her chest, down past her stomach to catch on the waistband of her jeans. She keens and pushes against his fingertips with what little leverage she has.

“You sing so sweetly for me,” he whispers in her ear as he reaches for the button on her pants.

“Shut up, Lucifer.” They stumble forward a few steps in his haste, and she presses her palms to the top of the piano, bending over, giving him a better angle to pull the denim down enough to—

“Ahh…”

And there’s tenderness, with his thumb so careful just _ there _, but then he reaches and she clenches around his fingers, and he groans as his hips jerk against her.

She gasps, grabs his hip, grinds back into him, and he chokes out a laugh.

“Eager, are we?” he asks breathlessly, pressing deeper, fingers twisting, and she’s cresting a wave, a glorious wave that keeps rising and rising and—

“Ngh…” The sound is more impulse than word, but it doesn’t matter when her eyes slip closed, and her hearing fuzzes out, and she only faintly notices her fingernails scratching the finish on the piano. She feels him brush the hair from her face and pull her jacket and blouse from her arms as she slowly comes down.

She reaches back, just to ground herself, but her palm skims the front of his trousers, and his fingers shake against her back and shoulder, apparently from the effort to not thrust forward. But she wants him desperate, wants him _ wanting_, and so she presses more firmly to hear his breath hitch and feel his hands seek her hips and grip them tightly.

But the way he has looked at her, eyes dark and tongue between his teeth, setting her alight from across the room—each filthy smirk, every quiet word—makes her slow, draw out his torment as she begins to rub slow circles, keeping her body from pressing into his.

And it is her own torture too, but it’s so sweet she thinks she can stand just a little more. Especially when he moans hotly into her ear, trying to form words and failing. She turns her head and nips at his lips and realizes, when he groans and falls forward a little more to press his lips to hers, that they haven’t kissed until this moment. It feels right, somehow, to do things so backward, and she grabs at his belt and unfastens it, taking pity on him, on _ herself_. She has only had a taste of him and his talented fingers, and it’s only whet her appetite for more.

He wears no underwear, and she is met, more quickly than expected, with his heat and urgency. He jolts forward, pinning her to the piano lid, though his hands aren’t idle either, and he takes her bra off as she pulls her jeans down. She takes a deep breath and slows them for another moment.

“_Please _ tell me you have…?” Her words are lost to a sigh as his fingertips find her breasts again, drawing soft moans from her mouth.

She feels him nod and hears a rustle and a crinkle of foil as he drops his shirt to the floor and pushes his trousers down a little further. She arches her back to improve the angle, and one of his hands returns to her hip, the other guiding him in, and she cries out at the contact. He presses deeper, and deeper still, and she clings to the edge of the piano, her other hand splayed out on the lid, reaching out for nothing.

He approaches the verge, and she sinks back onto him, hips tight against hips as they breathe together for a long moment. “Good?” he asks softly and leans into her, his newly bare chest flush with her back. She shivers at the motion, at the contact, at him inside her, and hums.

_ “Please,_” she asks, again, and he doesn’t deny her, pulls out marginally before snapping his hips forward.

They moan in harmony, and the rhythm, when they find it, is swift but aching, a push-and-pull so sweet she can’t keep her eyes open, even when his hand joins her on the piano lid, even when his fingertips meet where they are joined, and a cry is torn from her throat.

She is saying something, between panting breaths, but she can’t parse the meaning. She hears him respond, with a low rumble she can feel down her spine that only further stokes the fire in her belly, but she doesn’t understand his words either. And it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the way his hips press into her, the way his breaths come coarse and broken against the shell of her ear, the way she clenches and tightens and her world narrows to her and him and the frantic beating of her heart.

Her skin is so sensitive she feels she might fall apart at even a gentle caress, and his touch, when he brings it—stroking up her arm and down against her side, tenderness at odds with their speed and desperation—shatters her into so many pieces she no longer knows anything but the warmth and the almost violent pleasure of the chasm beneath her feet. She wavers on that precipice, and his low groan as he loses himself tears her from that edge, making her tumble down into nothing.

But they land together.

Afterward, Chloe finds her equilibrium against the piano, keeping herself standing as he draws away. She’s left wanting _ more _, but her body is feeling the edges of soreness, and she could really use a glass of water. Behind her, she can hear Lucifer stepping out of his trousers, presumably on his way to toss the condom, and so she tugs up her jeans and steps toward the bar. 

She fills one of the tumblers with water and leans against the bar, partially to relieve her legs of some of their ache and partially to eye him appreciatively. But when his back is to her, her eyes are torn from his disheveled curls and gently glistening skin, and she can’t help but notice the twin scars that curve around his shoulder blades. “Lucifer,” she says, his name choking out somewhere between concern and anger for _ something_, even though she doesn’t know what it is yet. 

He turns, eyebrows raised and tongue pressed against his cheek. “See something you like, Detective?” he asks, and she does, but she also sees something else.

She rounds the bar and walks toward him. “Your scars… What happened to your…?” She makes to reach for his shoulder, as if she could make him turn again, just to _ see _. But he steps back sharply, and her arm drops to her side.

His face falls, and she sees the veneer of his carefully crafted facade crumble. As if he is made more undone by this than he had been just minutes ago when he was breathing her name like a prayer. “Don’t. Please,” he says, and his voice is soft, almost _ frail _—a pianissimo foreign to his regular bravado. 

Chloe feels ridiculous now, half naked in the yawning space of his penthouse. He’s bared before her, stripped of his clothes, and, she thinks, perhaps some of his dignity. She watches him carefully stack bricks again until the tension snaps, and he steps around her to pour himself a scotch, keeping his back away from her.

He says nothing, only drinks deeply, and she crosses her arms in front of her, uncertain what to do with her hands. He glances at her, at his drink, and offers it to her a little awkwardly. All his grace seems gone from him, but she takes it as the concession it is, and takes a sip.

It’s good, though not her usual, and she sets it down quickly, Her blouse is lying on the floor by the piano, and she considers, for a moment, making a break for it, before she calms herself. She doesn’t want to go, not really. She _ wants _ to ask him about the scars again, to sit him down and make him answer. To find a target for this anger simmering under her skin and an explanation to soothe her concerns.

But he seems more stone than flesh now, something not even real, and she knows, instinctively, that pushing could only be disastrous. “Okay,” she says, an olive branch of her own, something to dispel the thing that has seemed to take up residence between them. She thinks he makes to say something, or at least plans to, when her phone rings. The sound is like being thrown from a bad dream, and she scrambles to find the blessed interruption in her jacket pocket. “Decker,” she answers, already moving toward her blouse. It’s a case, though she misses most of the details to the intensity of his gaze on her naked back. “Sure,” she says blankly and hangs up. Her bra will have to be a necessary sacrifice, she thinks as she pulls on her blouse and shoves her phone into her pocket so she can button it. “I have to go.”

Lucifer doesn’t deign to respond, or perhaps he doesn’t know how, and simply watches her pull herself together. She’ll have to make a stop at her apartment before going to the precinct. “See you,” she says, stepping into the elevator, as if that will somehow keep the silence at bay.

He’s still watching her with that strange, blank expression when the elevator doors close. 

And then Chloe does what any good Detective would do. She looks for clues.

* * *

“No, no, Beatrice. You must be sure to round those vowels.” Lucifer starts again at the top of the verse, and Trixie is singing again, this time with her face scrunched in concentration.

Chloe watches from the couch in his penthouse, twisting the cap of her pen as if it might drip the answers she needs like a wrung out towel. She appreciates this time, these lessons that somehow always fit around her schedule. _ “I won’t have Daniel skulking around my house, thank you very much,” _he had said once. When she’s here, under the guise of supervision, she feels like she can see him better. There’s much less bravado around her daughter, around her.

There’s case files spread out on his coffee table, some from her research and some from an actual LAPD case because Chloe has never known how to stop working. She wishes Reese Getty hadn’t offed himself almost as much as she wishes that someone hadn’t murdered this poor young man. But still, she finds herself drawn to watching Lucifer as he delights in helping her daughter stumble over words and notes until they smooth out into something beautiful. A talent indeed.

She watches him at the piano and almost lets her mind wander before Trixie’s laughter reminds her why she is here, why she has made this her excuse to spend time with him the way they did before. But she knows now what those fingers can do and wishes so desperately that she could will herself to visit when Trixie wasn’t there so he could press her against the piano again. Or maybe this time, they’d make it to the couch. Or the bed. Chloe’s not picky. And she definitely _ isn’t _ going to continue this train of thought. She shakes herself, turns back to the papers, and shoves the ones about _ him _ beneath photos and financials of the victim.

She doesn’t notice when the music has stopped, when the lesson has ended, until she hears his voice float over her shoulder and feels the heat of his body just behind her. “Why was he making payments to Jorge?” At her confused and, perhaps, startled sound, he continues, pointing at one of the records, “Right there, every twelfth day.” 

When she turns to look at him, he’s stepped back from her, as if he somehow feels no longer welcome in her space. Or maybe it’s just her reading into whatever this thing is that they’ve fallen into. “Who’s Jorge?” she asks, gathering up the papers and tucking them into her bag.

Before he can answer, if he planned on it, Trixie bounds over, offering Chloe her jacket. “Lucifer says I deserve an extra slice of cake tonight for my tremendous work today,” she announces as she pulls on her sweater. “He says I’m progressing quite well for someone of my age.”

Chloe has to laugh, the sound bubbling out of her, because the words coming from Trixie’s mouth are no doubt something she was told by the man in question. She has a feeling she’ll be losing this battle. “We’ll see about that, babe.” Chloe squeezes Trixie’s shoulder and stands. She looks back to Lucifer. “Jorge?”

Lucifer just smiles. “I’ll text you, Detective,” he says. “Have a lovely evening.”

Trixie drags her toward the elevator, laser focused on the possibility of a chocolate flavored reward. When she turns back, Chloe sees his eyes darken for just a moment, thinks she catches his tongue darting out between his lips, before Trixie has pulled her into the elevator and the doors shut behind her. _ Shit_. 

* * *

She’s never really noticed how long the ride to his penthouse is until now. There are folded papers shoved into her back pocket and a question that burns in her chest. _ Why _ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The sound of piano music greets her when the doors open, and she recognizes it from Trixie’s humming; something for the spring concert, she’d said. It continues as she steps into the room, and she sees Lucifer, now, scribbling onto composition paper with one hand as the other moves deftly over the keys. If he’s aware of her arrival, he makes no motions to acknowledge her presence. 

But the papers in her pocket say otherwise, that he _ does _ know she’s there. And that makes her bold. “Lucifer,” she starts, because it’s the most sensible thing to do, and Chloe is nothing but sensible. Most of the time, anyway. “_Lucifer_,” she says again. She plans to continue her train of thought, but the temperature seems to rise, and so she closes her eyes and forges ahead in a new direction. “What’s this song?”

She hears him set his pen down gently on the piano, catches the faint noise of rustling paper as he shuffles through his work and sets it neatly stacked beside the pen. She hears the piano bench slide back, and that is when she opens her eyes.

He looks up at her, and she’s suddenly thrown back four months, when he asked her to sing. “It’s for the concert, of course,” he says, as if she should have known that already. Except she does, and she folds her arms, waiting for more. Hoping, for a moment, that he might speak freely. But he doesn’t. As if he will only tell her the truth if she asks; even then, she wonders if it will be the complete truth. 

And so Chloe takes a steadying breath, thinks briefly of getting a drink, and pulls out her research. She steps to the piano and all but slams it against the lid. “Six years ago, you didn’t exist.”

His lips tighten for a fraction of a second before he flashes a grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “You’ll see, Detective, that that’s completely impossible and factually incorrect.”

Which, he’s not wrong. People don’t just materialize out of nowhere. But this enigmatic choir director with too much money and no history before six years ago _ did_. Chloe hangs onto the shred of belief that he really did just run away from his family, and continues as such. “I found Neil Palmer.”

His eyes narrow. “And what did that wretched individual have to say?”

She shook her head. “You showed up at his door six years ago with nothing but the clothes off your back and a hundred thousand dollars, cash, asking for citizenship papers under the name ‘Lucifer Morningstar’. Where’d the money come from?”

He shrugs. “I made a deal.”

“What, a _ deal with the Devil_?”

He smirks, but stays silent.

She shuffles a few pages around, more for something to do with her hands than to remind herself of what she’s found. She’s not liable to forget. “I called a contact in the U.K. There are no records of any missing persons matching your description.” She doesn’t want to think about what that might mean.

He leans back a little, and his hands find the edge of the bench in a posture that looks casual but isn’t. He smirks a little unconvincingly. “Well, I’m not British, am I?”

She sorts through a few pages. She knows what she needs to do next, but she’s stalling. She knows she is. There’s no going back; not after this. 

“Look,” Lucifer says warily, standing, the bench shuddering behind him. “If this is to do with Beatrice’s safety, I assure you—”

“I know about Jimmy Barnes.”

He blinks, and his walls seem to shatter again, like they had when she’d asked about the scars. But then he seems to pull into himself, and his voice turns ragged. “That pathetic malcontent deserved everything he got.”

She nods to herself. After hearing the full story, about Delilah, about the scandal and the money and the horrible tragedy of it all, she has a hard time feeling sorry for the man she found, raving mad, in a fancy mental hospital up north. But, still, she has to ask. “And what...did he get?”

He stares at the folder on the lid of the piano.

“What did you _ do_, Lucifer?” she asks, but, somewhere deep, she knows. Everything she found, _ all _ her research was leading up to this moment. She realizes she can’t feel her feet.

“Chloe,” he says, his words low and rumbling, cascading over her in a timbre she feels more than she hears. “Don’t.” _ Don’t talk, don’t press, don’t stand here in front of me right now_. 

But she is a damned good detective, and she knows when she’s close to a breakthrough. “Who are you?” she asks, demands, pleads. She feels the heat bleeding from him like it’s a wound she is not prepared to bandage; one that she has caused with a knife made of curiosity and good intentions.

“_Detective…_” And it’s a warning as much as it’s a plea, the syllables dissonant against each other and against the look in his eye; one she hasn’t seen before—half anger, half fear.

A voice in her head tells her to _ stop _ , that she can’t handle this, but she’s never listened to it before—not when she walked into the audition for _ Broadway High School_, not when she walked down the aisle, wishing her dad was there to lead her, not when she walked out of the doctor’s office with a scan of a thing that looked more like a smudge than her soon-to-be daughter. And she’s not going to listen to it now.

“Who _ are _ you?” she asks again, and, when his eyes flash, fire burning in his sclera, she forces herself to not ignore it this time.

Her hands are shaking, but something like triumph is spreading through her veins, and she’s warmed by it. Or by him. “_ What _ are you?” she hears herself ask, and there’s terror in her voice, but also wonder; she thinks there might be a tear on her cheek, but she can’t feel her face.

A dozen expressions cross his face in a matter of seconds, all lost to a dull, deadened resignation, darkening his eyes and making his hand, which had been half-reaching for her, fall to his side. “I’m no liar,” he says with a specious softness and an enforced flatness that aches and shudders along her nerves.

“Lucifer—” she says, and the word is caught in her throat at the implication of it. _ Lucifer_. _ Satan. _

_ Devil. _

His face fractures like a mirror fallen to the ground, like a note she can’t quite reach, and the cracks fill with flame, but then he turns away, with a speed that would frighten her, except that his shoulders are hunched and he seems to be trying to make himself look small.

“Leave,” he says harshly, staggering to the bar where he grabs a bottle of whiskey and bypasses the glasses entirely. His hand, clenched around the bottle, is red and ravaged.

She eyes the elevator, taking a step toward it before she stops herself. She _ should _run away. Despite everything she’s told herself, it would be best to go. But she can’t.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, and she’s shocked to find it’s the truth.

He scoffs and drains the bottle, dropping it heavily on the bar.

“I’m _ not_,” she insists, abandoning her research, rounding the piano.

“No?” He turns back and looks at her, and the pit drops out from under her feet. There is a nightmare standing before her, dressed in a trim suit, and she knows, suddenly, that _ this _ is what Barnes saw, what the others saw. Her sanity rocks, and there are screams echoing off the inside of her skull.

But then he grins, and it’s as tortured as it is brutal, and she sees, in the flashes of his face, the way he smiled softly at her, like she was the only person in the room; the way his voice lilted in her ears when he asked her to sing; the care he took, leading Trixie through her exercises. The warmth on his face, the tenderness of his hands, the way his eyes shut when he plays. Awash in the memories, her mind settles, the shouts turning to chords marked out on piano keys.

He nods to himself, misunderstanding her silence. The more human contours of his skin reappear, the fire in his eyes fading back to darkness. “That’s what I thought,” he says quietly, almost brokenly, and something shatters in her own heart.

And she makes her decision.

He blinks at her as she walks up to him, and, when she cups his cheek, he flinches. He looks down, but she steps even closer to meet his gaze. It’s haunted, but she thinks she can almost see the stars. She reaches for his hand and finds it trembling.

“Chloe…” he whispers, not moving, barely even breathing.

“You say you don’t lie,” she tells his pulled-together brows, the arch of his nose, the curve of his lip, and he nods almost imperceptible.

“Why are you here?” she asks, and, though she tries to keep her tone neutral, he still looks pained when he finally manages to speak.

“There’s no music in Hell.” It’s on a breath, barely audible over her own gentle panting, but the sorrow in it pierces through all the light in her soul.

“Oh, Lucifer,” she says softly.

He pulls away from her, apparently unable to be so close any longer. She lets him go this time. She doesn’t want to push, even as much as she already _ has_. But he doesn’t flee, as she thought he might, only settles, again, at the piano, as if it grounds him; and it does. She knows, now, what it means for him to press his fingers to the keys, to draw an aimless melody from ivory, to turn his torments into the sweetest pleasures.

She waits a breath before she joins him, sitting on the bench and fighting the urge to card her fingers through his hair, to coax him into some feeling other than sorrow. She’s surprised, suddenly, by the intensity of her feelings, and the words slip from her tongue without her permission. "Sing it for me?" she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Lucifer only rests his fingertips on the keys, shifting them as if playing a ghostly melody. “Not tonight,” he says. Chloe can see him closing off, trying desperately to rebuild the ramparts she has so easily destroyed. When he speaks again, his voice is but a whimper. “Could you please leave?”

“I—” But her words have been stolen from her. She bites her lip, slides off the bench as carefully as she can, and walks to the elevator. She hits the button and steps through the doors, into the light.

She can’t bring herself to look back.

* * *

When Chloe wakes up the next morning, it’s to find an email telling her the last few of Trixie’s private lessons have been cancelled. _ She has mastered her solo, _ the message says. _ There is no need for additional practice. _

Every email is a little cold, she tells herself, shaking her head deliberately to try to dispel the ache behind her eyes. It doesn’t work, but then Trixie is loudly pulling clothes out of the dryer outside Chloe’s door, and she’s swept up into the flow of another day. One completely devoid of burning eyes and flayed, ravaged flesh, but also of a soft, welcoming gaze and the voice of an angel.

An angel. A _ literal _ angel.

But Chloe Decker is nothing if not a practical woman, and every philosophical concern gets washed away in the tide of work and rent and the way Trixie smiles when she gets all the high parts. She really is getting good, and Chloe loves to hear it, even if every note makes her ache.

But the concert looms ever closer, and she still hasn’t worked up the courage to stay to watch a practice, or arrive early even just to catch a glance. And she certainly hasn’t managed to hit the button on the private elevator. It’s not that she’s afraid of Lucifer—she wouldn’t let her daughter anywhere near anything she thought was _ dangerous_. No, it’s his sorrow not his anger that she really fears. It’s the dangerous fluttering in her chest, a whisper by her ear she sometimes imagines; the way she wakes up, sometimes, panting and sweating, remembering only the warmth of his touch, the fire in his eyes.

It’s his ‘_don’t, please_’s, and his ‘_leave_’s, and his expression when she touched his face, like he might shatter under her fingertips. The resignation in every line of his body. Because he is the Devil and he can’t allow himself to believe in anything, even in _ her_.

And she’s… Well, she’s just a human who can’t allow herself to have faith in _ him. _

* * *

The day of the concert, Chloe finds herself wishing a case would drop. Not that she wishes anyone dead, especially not after she knows that Hell is actually a goddamned tangible place—and that thought makes her want to hide for the foreseeable future. She just desperately wants to have an excuse to avoid any risks of brushing past Lucifer at any point during the evening. 

But the day drags, her pile of paperwork is finished _ and _ double checked, and she only looks up when Dan stops in front of her desk just before it’s time to leave. But it’s just about seating and taking Trixie afterward, and Chloe is suddenly so anxious she can’t remember driving to the concert hall, let alone sitting down. 

If there was an award for listening to music without really hearing it, Chloe would have won four times over. The songs ebb and flow into each other with no need for explanation or introduction. She even thinks she catches sight of Dan getting teary over Trixie’s solo. But it isn’t until the palpable tension, a room rife with _ desire_, that Chloe brings herself to look at the stage rather than the front edge, where she’s been staring the entire night. 

Lucifer faces the audience now, a microphone in hand, and she can feel the weight of his gaze directed toward her. It should be too bright for him to see, but, still, he’s looking directly at her. No one else seems to notice or even care, because he begins to speak. And he is speaking directly to her.

“This song is an original composition of mine. The gentleman, as it were, is making a plea, of sorts, for the lady to understand that though he has, perhaps, left her, he would never truly abandon her. It is called ‘Out of the Light’. Please, enjoy.”

And then he smiles. Not one of the smiles he cuts into the masks he wears—not a lecherous grin or a pained grimace—but the soft smile that music brings to his face, like she’s a melody he’s been trying to transcribe that he’s finally, _ finally _gotten down.

She feels herself smile back, and that ache in her chest turns to warmth and comfort. His eyes sparkle, and she might as well be the only person in the room, all the breath stolen from her.

He turns back around to conduct, and she feels a pang of loss for a moment before Maze starts to play, and she’s swept up in it. It starts slow, the altos pronouncing the… Latin, Chloe presumes, with a delicacy attributable to their talented director. She doesn’t know the words, but she can parse the meaning. And when the song ends—when the concert ends—he turns back to the audience, to _ her _, and bows, eyes sparkling like the stars.

She loses track of him for a moment, wrangling Trixie as she, along with the rest of the choir, runs into the auditorium. It’s Dan’s weekend, and Chloe can’t help but be glad for it. Even though she’s certain of Lucifer’s feelings, now, something about it still feels fleeting, strangely fragile.

So after Trixie and Dan head home, she makes her way to the elevator, slams her hand onto the button in her haste, and almost trips over the threshold pressing inside. She hits the button for the penthouse with some trepidation, still, though her faith has filled her heart with a gently flickering flame.

* * *

Three days later, on a particularly cloudy Monday morning, Lucifer appears in front of her desk at the precinct. She knows it’s him because of the way the bullpen had shifted the moment he arrived, splitting and settling around him like the tide. Like he had always been there. There were no doubt curious looks and quiet whispers as he made his way directly to her, but she ignores it. She always has. 

“Detective,” he says, his voice pitched just high enough to be full of false enthusiasm, but a falseness he’s trying to make a reality.

When Chloe looks up, she sees that he’s already begun to fiddle with his cufflinks, leaning too far into her space, and looking for all the world like a scared child. He has a question, she can tell, and he’s already prepared himself for disappointment. Suddenly it feels like she hasn’t seen him in weeks.

“Detective,” he tries again, meeting her gaze. “I thought I might be of use to you today. On your case.”

“Case?” He’d done it once or twice before, between the sex and the _ knowing_, given her tips and offering new perspectives that had made her solve rate skyrocket. The lieutenant would have her head and her job if she found out Chloe had shared case details with a civilian, but when she hit walls, Lucifer had been there to help, even if it had been through a text. “I don’t have a case,” she continues, sitting back to look at him better. 

Lucifer has the audacity to look a bit crestfallen before he sits on the edge of her desk and reaches for the pen she had set down. “Well, the next one, then.”

Chloe has to hold back a bark of laughter, clapping her hand over her mouth. She pulls herself together before saying, “You can’t just become a detective like that.”

“Oh, no, darling, that’s _ your _ job. I’ll simply consult.” And then he’s grinning, truly this time, like he’s just invented a new type of candy. 

“But why?” Chloe can’t fathom how he came to this conclusion, other than perhaps that the Devil is now predisposed to spontaneity after centuries of boredom. 

“It’s been ages since I’ve been in the punishment game,” he says with a feral grin before becoming somber again. He looks at her like she’s a puzzle he doesn’t know what to do with, one that might have pieces missing. And after the past few months, Chloe’s begun to think she does have a piece missing.

"I'm good at seeing patterns, Detective. That’s all,” he says. “How else would I work with rhythm?"

She’s about to respond to him, tell him she can’t possibly let him help without losing her job, when Monroe comes by her desk and drops a folder on it. “Your case, Decker.” 

Lucifer lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree, and suddenly he’s talked his way on to the case with such deftness that Chloe wonders if it’s from his powers or simply because he has lived so long. He flashes her a dark look over the lieutenant’s shoulder, and, rather abruptly, Chloe would rather be doing anything _ but _ work this case. Her cheeks burn as she leads them to the parking garage, insistent on taking her car, because what she desires right now is some semblance of control.

“Just remember,” she says when they get to the car. “I’m the lead on this. You’re just consulting.” A consulting devil. It sounds strange; frankly, it sounds entirely impossible, but Chloe has been living her life in adagio for too long, a carefully balanced rhythm of work and Trixie and, well, _ work_. But Lucifer’s presence had sent her off book with fewer discordant notes than she had anticipated. She finds she likes this new arrangement. 

Before she can turn back to look at him, Lucifer crowds into her space like he belongs there. “Oh, the Devil and the detective,” he laughs, leaning low to breathe against her neck. “I quite like the sound of that.”


End file.
